


Long-Tongued Liar

by englishable



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-27 12:27:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19790875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/englishable/pseuds/englishable
Summary: Thanos taught Nebula and her sister many things, but the skill for deception was not among them. Fortunately, Nebula finds a talented teacher.It is slow, strange going, but Loki seems to find the whole thing amusing.





	Long-Tongued Liar

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to emeraldspiral's post on tumblr (which the notes don't let me link, apparently), beginning as follows: "I like to imagine that while Nebula and Loki’s relationship is mainly founded on their similarities, there was one major difference between them that drew Nebula to Loki; his ability to lie. It was the one skill Thanos never taught any of his children, so that they could never lie to him.”
> 
> And a necessary thanks to A:tLA for the joke. You’ll know it when you see it.

….

He sits her down and swings himself into a chair across the table with that look of wry, puckish indulgence still on his face, tenting his fingertips together while he thinks. Nebula leans forward on her elbows and waits.

“All right.” Loki lays both long hands flat atop the table like a pair of playing cards. “Let’s start with something simple, shall we? Repeat after me – ‘I am a four hundred-foot tall purple bilgesnipe with pink antlers and silver wings.’”

Nebula stares at him.

“Why would I ever want to claim such a thing?”

“That,” he points, “is a secondary issue. The only pertinent question is whether or not you can persuade some unsuspecting but reasonably rational individual into believing it.”

“And you are playing the part of the reasonably rational individual, yes?”

“A reasonably intelligent individual, then.” She narrows her eyes; Loki rolls his. “We can adjust the particular terms more to your liking later – for now, I just want to hear you say it.”

Nebula pauses. Loki lifts his thin, ironic brows in expectation as she rearranges her posture, squaring her shoulders and collecting her hands into fists.

“I,” she declares, in a voice that smacks down like an executioner’s ax, “am a four hundred-foot tall purple bilgesnipe with pink antlers and silver wings.”

For a moment Loki does not move, except to clasp a hand over his mouth and tap a finger against his clean-shaven jaw. “No,” he says, finally. “That’s not quite the effect you’re after.”

Nebula keeps her fists gathered. “I said what you asked me to.”

“You’re telling a lie, not giving an order. Only a fool attempts to lie in the imperative,” something flickers briefly within his expression, “and in those circumstances he’s nearly always lying to himself, as well.”

Nebula considers.

She remembers the first time she ever heard Loki lie, which was shortly after Thanos found him drifting in the black abyss of space, and she had only known they were lies because the silvery, nimble words had come from his mouth with such a dazzling and contradictory rapidity that they could not possibly have all been true. She had thought at the time how it would be an envious skill, the art of letting such slender, bright threads fling you between the stable points of truth until your whole web was spun.

“I would like to try again,” she says.

“Go on, then.”

She leans further towards him until she is nearly flat against the table, keeping her gaze locked with his as though watching him through the scope of a rifle. The hum of the Benatar’s engine passes through her unmarrowed metal bones, and her voice comes in a low, premonitory rasp. “I am a four hundred-foot tall purple bilgesnipe with pink antlers and silver wings.”

“No,” he says, immediately, although Nebula has not the slightest idea why he glances quickly away and purses his lips; he speaks only after regaining his composure. “You’re not making a death threat, either. That part can come later.”

She grits her teeth. “I am a four hundred-foot tall purple bilgesnipe with pink antlers and silver wings.”

He brings his thumb and forefinger together as if pinching a tailor’s thread. “A little more charm and a little less unmitigated hatred, perhaps.”

“I am a forty-foot tall pink bilgesnipe with purple wings and silver antlers.”

“And a sincere liar always remembers to keep his details straight, of course. It’s easier that way.”

Nebula uncurls her fists. She has been taught to fight, to plan, to devise and persist and kill in every way conceivable, to hand her life over as freely as though returning something lent her as a favor whenever its owner finally requested it back; the only half-decent lie Nebula has ever told was the one she always offered to Thanos when she and Gamora were young girls together, after those long fights that left their hands and faces bloodied by the awful intimacy of slaughter.

Get up, he would say, as she lay there, or do require me to I carry you?

And no, Nebula would always answer, no, Father, no, I can walk by myself.

She tries again.

“I am a four hundred-foot tall purple bilgesnipe,” she says, and her throat feels so sinew-tight the words sound almost gentle, “with pink antlers and silver wings.”

Loki sits back a little, looking at her. There is a strange light in his spectral-blue eyes that Nebula does not understand.

“Very good.” He raises his hands in some kind of surrender. “That’s enough for now – or we might try another tact, if you prefer.” He crosses his arms. “Repeat after me – ‘once upon a time.’”

…

And Nebula remains an atrocious liar, quite frankly, but she proves a rather splendid storyteller – it is her emphatic conviction that lends the authenticity, Loki suggests, although at first her only sympathetic listeners are Mantis and Thor; Thor asks all the right questions and nods his shaggy head in prompting – and she leaps her way through a hundred imagined new beginnings.

Once upon a time there was a king, she says. Once upon a time there was a pair of brothers, once upon a time there was a pair of sisters, and whether they lived happily into the ever-after or not I will decide for myself.

…


End file.
